Thankfully, no pedestrians on pedestrian overpass

All together now: A huge, huge sigh of relief.

It was bad enough that a 30-foot, 5-ton section of pedestrian overpass got knocked down onto the Aiea offramp Tuesday noon by a too-high forklift being hauled atop a trailer. Traffic was clogged for hours but no one was injured.

But it was frightening to realize that if the incident had occurred just 30 minutes later, dozens of students from nearby Aiea Elementary School would have been on that very pedestrian overpass, walking home after school.

Initial reports said the trucking company did not have a permit for carrying an oversized load on this road, and that it could be responsible for the damage. If paying for repairs is the highest cost incurred, well, consider that it could have been worse. A whole lot worse.

A poignant farewell by Arlo Guthrie

It sounds like the perfect soundtrack to what music icon Arlo Guthrie describes as "a great love."

The death of Guthrie’s wife of 43 years, Jackie, was announced this week, and photos of the couple from their 2006 trip to Hawaii were circulated. At around that time, the singer had written "Haleiwa Blues," on the playlist of his "Live in Sydney" CD.

He had just performed it Oct. 2 in Vermont at a concert marking the 100th anniversary of the birth of Woody Guthrie, his equally iconic musical father. Done in a slack-key style, with steel guitar behind it, the recording is up, along with a video of that Haleiwa trip, on YouTube. And it’s worth a listen.